Darkness in your palm
by Yamazakura
Summary: [SN, yaoi] They start with fake eyelashes, glueing them carefully to his eyelids...


**Darkness in your palm**

They start with fake eyelashes, glueing them carefully to his eyelids. Then Ino - hardened, with head shaved bold and in Akimichi family armor suit nothing like the former obnoxious blonde - guides Sai through the task of smearing peach-colored foundation over the colorlessly-gray skin.

"Eyeliner," she orders, looking absentmindedly out of the glassless window of the crumbling tower.

Sai complies, spreading the precious black substance over the edges of Naruto's lids. He drags the tiny brush over the skin, imagining Naruto's eyes look flirtingly narrowed with this little trick and remembering them narrowed to accompany a sly feline smile. He pauses to count the years, but fails, as Naruto's forever young face hadn't changed at all from the day he turned sixteen.

Sai applies violet, blue and gray eyeshadows to hide blood red of Naruto's yet closed eyes in the illusion of long since escaped blue.

Naruto exhales loudly and shifts ever so slightly in his crystal coffin - and this slight movement makes Sai's heart clench painfully. He reaches out to touch Naruto's cheek but Ino is no longer daydreaming, she slaps him and jerks her head towards the pile of cosmetics.

"Lipstick," she says and Sai silently takes small tubes lipstick and lip gloss. When he touches Naruto's pale lips with it, he's repulsed to the core by his own actions, by the duty to turn this man - no, still a boy - into a woman; but yet he continues this mockery, this blasphemy without a sound of complaint.

When he is finished, Naruto's face is no longer one of an exhausted Sleeping Beast, but a caricature, a cartoonish sketch - with lashes long and thick beyond unnatural, dripping with pink gloss lips painted upon his own bloodless ones and thin blonde eyebrows now black.

Then Ino, pieces of the suit of armor clattering like tiny war bells as she moves, puts her horned helmet onto the windowsill and brings the dress. Sai feels like his cheeks are burning with humiliation, but knows that his face doesn't in fact betray him even though his mask is pulled down - having learned to _feel_, he long since lost the ability to even pretend to expressthe emotions.

The dress is white, covered with lace and glitter. It looks like a wedding dress - of the sort they wear in the West, and the bitter irony of it shakes Sai so much he stops moving and Naruto's pliant body he had picked up slides back.

Ino hisses and Sai instantly collects himself, making it look like a _physical _slip. He picks Naruto up again. The body, once that of a strong young man is now sickeningly thin. He remembers hugging Sakura once, when she was on the edge of adulthood, and now Naruto feels even thinner, ribs sticking out more than possible with every faint rise of his chest.

With practiced effort they put the dress on, creating curves where Nature didn't intend them to be. And not only the dress - Sai puts white stockings on Naruto's hairless legs. Smooth skin under his hands makes him sick - it means Naruto's body doesn't even have the power to recreate what Ino and he depilated a year ago. Shameful white stiletto pumps take their position as well. There is no lingerie and Sai faces a dilemma deciding which is more embarrassing - laced silky lingerie or none at all...

Then Ino starts working on the hair which has reached the ground before stopped growing and Sai turns to the window, to the ruins of Konoha below, to defeated Country of Fire.

They shouldn't look that old, he muses suddenly. Only thirteen years have passed since the Fall...

"Ready," Ino barks and Sai is struck by the view of the motionless doll Naruto has become. Lace, jewelry, glitter... It is unnatural - but yet Sai wonders whether his memory betrays him, and maybe Naruto has always been like this - a doll they dress up to mock _him._

They pick Naruto up and place him back into the crystal coffin. Sai sits down and _reaches _to the stones the tower is made of. They ask for revenge and he promises it, and in return four rough columns spurt out of the floor towards the sky, as the roof melts. Silver chains dangle from the tops of the columns and Sai attaches them to the corners of the coffin. Then he bends over it and arranges Naruto's hands so they hold a blood red apple. He whispers barely audibly:

"Sakura has almost grasped the concept," and makes several seals. The chains shorten readily, raising the coffin to dangle between the columns.

Instantly the wind begins to blow. It howls and cries and swirls around the tower.

Ino puts the helmet on and hides her face behind a frightening mask. Sai pulls the cloth that obscures his face up and picks up his ninjato.

It is starting raining - the sky is mourning once again its greatest loss.

* * *

Sakura is exhausted, Sai thinks as he takes in her appearance. Her white hair stopped tugging at his heart when he first saw a mutilated body of a five-year-old girl, whose only fault was that she had been born in Konoha. He thinks of it as of another _sterile_ part of their existence – white walls, white clothes, white faces. A futile attempt at purifying their blood and dirt-soaked souls.

"That's it," Sakura passes a small paper box to Sai, and having hid it in the pouch strapped to his right thigh he stops closer to hug her. She collapses into his embrace and he forces his hands to roam over her body. She whimpers and moans as if it is not the life force he pours into her but his seed.

"Soon we will be free," she whispers to him and Sai nods silently.

Soon the Sleeping Beast will awaken. He will take his place on the Silver Throne and reign over rejuvenated Country of Fire.

Yes.

Sai releases her and heads back to his cell, white walls of which are covered with splashes of gray. In the illusionary safety of it he opens the box to find inside a necklace, an injector and a vial. The necklace is a blue ribbon with a blue gem, the injector is blue plastic with a bluish steel of needle and the vial is blue glass wrapped around blue liquid.

Simply looking at it makes his heart falter. The blue makes him remember – the blue of ever-gray now sky, the blue of poisonously red now waters, the blue of his paintings – and the blue of Naruto's eyes.

Injection makes his world sway and Sai imagines that the blue stray flows freely in his veins, shaming the red of his blood.

Then he stands up, pulls up his mask, picks up his ninjato and the box and heads out of the Sanctuary.

Soon everything will be over.

* * *

Sai stares. He is a shadow among many others and he is reduced to what a shadow can do – stare and sway. And so he stares and sways.

He stares at the lace, at the glitter, at the white and the purple, at the dirt and the blood. He stares as his Sleeping Beast is defiled by the Traitor, as the columns crumble and the chains snap and the coffin breaks.

The dress is being torn and the make-up washed off.

Then the Traitor starts to cry. He covers Naruto's face with small kisses and cries without tears. Feverish sounds of lips lingering on skin, of a tongue trailing wet patterns, or saliva being dried by the cold wind envelop the top of the tower.

Sai thinks he hears him ask: "What do they want from me? From you?" but then he thinks he imagined it, for the Traitor is just that – the Traitor and the blue in his veins gently takes control from his swaying with the shadows mind and locks him in a world of silence.

Then he suddenly remembers the name of the Traitor – one forbidden for pronunciation. Uchiha Sasuke.

Sasuke covers Naruto's face with small kisses that become more and more urgent with every passing second. But the body in his hands remains just that – a pliant body of a condemned person.

And so, Sasuke picks up Naruto's naked – for he had torn the dress off him – form and while Sai blinks lazily disappears.

Futile.

They will take Naruto back – as usual. Only this time they will bring him not to the crumbling Konoha but to the Sanctuary.

And then Sai will secure the necklace around Naruto's neck and pull him out of his sleep.

And the world will start to rotate again.

* * *

Naruto wails and thrashes against the bars of his cell. Sai looks at him and feels like smiling, but he is simply not able to – the muscles of his face won't shift not matter how hard he tries.

"Let me go!" Naruto cries, and maybe he'd start clawing at his own skin, hadn't his hands been secured by the sleeves of his white shirt.

He is so vulnerable it makes Sai tremble – there is not a hint of red in his eyes, all he possesses now is his own chakra – which is of no use here in Sanctuary.

"What do you want?!" Naruto shouts and Sai only shakes his head with the same non-existent smile. Ino and Sakura stare at Naruto with indescribable longing – and oh, they scare him. Sai chuckles – what a bunch of weirdos they are! Bold Ino in her suit of armor, white-haired Sakura in her sterile gown and he, with face paralyzed in non-caring.

"We want for you to take over the Silver Throne," Sakura says dreamily and it makes Naruto stumble back, look at them wide-eyed.

"Are you… mad?" he whispers harshly and the three of them laugh. Oh, that is rich! "What Silver Throne? Where am I? Where is everyone?"

And suddenly Sai realizes that Naruto knows nothing. He fell asleep on the day he turned sixteen – four years prior to Konoha's destruction and the establishment of the Silver Throne.

He sighs with defeat, as it means he has to relive all the painful memories he had hidden deep under the surface of his calm persona. He doesn't want to.

* * *

Sasuke cries. _Again_.

Merciful… whatever, the man really has no 'off' for his crying option. Sai remembers all the stories of him as of a cold and emotionless bastard – something that made him wonder even in the times he was a cold emotionless bastard himself, for Sai indeed was less of a human being and more of a… creation, while Sasuke, overflowed with hatred and desire, still maintained an outward persona of such coldness that froze blood in veins.

Now he always cries. He sees Naruto on the top of Hokage tower in Hokage clothes and cries. He takes Naruto away and cries. He finds out they retrieved Naruto and cries again. He finds Naruto on the top of Hokage tower in nothing but a pair of red fluffy fox ears and with nine red fluffy fox tails attached to his rear – and he _bloody__cries_.

Sai long since stopped anticipating any sort of a reaction different from crying. Now, at the sight of Naruto, quite alive and utterly confused, Sasuke cries.

"Sasuke?.." There is no animosity in Naruto's voice, although when he went to sleep years and years ago his seemingly endless faith in the man turned into hate.

Sasuke falls from the Silver Throne and crawls to Naruto's side, clutching at his blue gown and cries. Sai lingers in the shadows and watches with no apparent interest other than slight tingling somewhere in the pit of his stomach. The tingling shifts and nests in his groin when Sasuke's desperate clinging makes the gown slide down anorexically thin shoulders, revealing grayish skin beneath and – lower – pink nipples.

Naruto reaches down, on the verge of hysteria himself and asks breathlessly: "Sasuke – what is going on? Where is everyone? What has happened?"

Sasuke's panting slows down, but he doesn't stop clinging and the gown makes its last futile attempt at staying on Naruto before falling down in a pile of blue cotton. The tingling in Sai's groin turns into something not completely forgotten, and he, not tearing eyes away from the pair in front of him, reaches down.

Sasuke starts his kissing-Naruto routine but he is still on his knees and either way he ends up with his face buried in blond pubic hair, with his lips around a limp organ. Naruto gasps and babbles, but his words do not reach Sai's ears – he leisurely strokes himself.

The first trickle of blood falls down from Naruto's forehead and Sai picks up his speed – he is close to coming and Naruto – to crumbling.

* * *

"What do you want?"

"What – do – you – want?"

"_What the fuck do you want_?!"

* * *

Sai drifts. Ino and Sakura drift next to him. Blue envelops them. They remember.

It happened sometime after Akatsuki tried to capture Naruto. Yamato, injured in the battle, died after long suffering. There was no one to keep the demon at bay.

It was Naruto's proposition, honestly.

There is another way, Sakura kept on saying, remember how Sasuke subdued you? For a while they played with the idea, but one morning Naruto couldn't control himself and let his eyes turn blood red. Then blood red charka enveloped him. Then there was a tail. And another… And another…

Then Tsunade made The Injection.

Naruto fell asleep on his sixteenth birthday. He was placed in a plastic container with an autonomic life-supporting system. The container was hidden in a cave in the mountains.

Then the war started…

And ended.

Naruto kept on sleeping.

They – Sai, Ino and Sakura – found the cave and made it their Sanctuary.

Then they embarked on the road of revenge.

* * *

Sai cocks his head to the side and watches as Sasuke rocks Naruto's bloody form.

Those clones, made by Sakura never last long – but somehow they maintain a …linear? mind. Every other remembers what has happened to the one before.

Naruto dies every other week in Sasuke's arms, over and over. The Traitor suffers and every one of them – Sai, Ino and Sakura – think he deserved it. In the end, it was his fault and his only that everything ended the way it did.

But it is every bit as boring as dressing Naruto's clones and leaving them on the top of the Hokage tower.

Sai makes a decision and tingles from head to toes with anticipation.

The door, the forbidden door, the unmarred door is there, at the farthest corridor of the Sanctuary. On the other side of it lies their greatest treasure.

Naruto.

Sai opens the door and enters. The container is made of white plastic with a small translucent window on top. Sai peers in and sees nothing.

There is no one inside the box.

Sai sighs with defeat and leaves the room.

He forgot, Naruto – the real Naruto – died years ago, when enraged Sasuke tried to free him and woke the Beast up instead.

Oh, well.

He'd be back to his clone routine then.

But something tugs at the corner of his mind and although he can't really remember what it is, he knows it is something important – unbearably important.

A moment before his mind plunges into darkness, he asks himself – if they started a new routine, the one with clones, what has happened to the Sleeping Beast? And – more importantly – where had he come from? Where did they take the body? For Sakura learned how to clone just then…

* * *

On the top of Hokage tower, among crystal shards in a pool of blonde hair lies a body. It is naked and seemingly dead.

But something happens – it stirs. Eyes open and look mindlessly into the sky. The eyes are blue and the ever-gray sky cannot do anything but twitch and open up the clouds to reveal a patch of blue. The eyes close contentedly and a sigh escapes from thin lips.


End file.
